Non-English Keyboards Macintosh OS X

Macintosh System OS X comes with various utilities, but you need to
activate them before they can be used. Unlike System 9, you no longer need
to install separate Language Kits. Note that installing OS X upgrades
from Apple will allow you to be updated on new.

The following have been added as of 10.10 (Yosemite)

Software Compatibility

Some very old versions of Macintosh programs originally developed in a pre-OSX environment (e.g. Office 2001) may not be compatible with some Unicode keyboards, however this problem has been resolved in almost all upgrades and is non-existant in OS X native programs.

Activate Keyboards

Yosemite and Mavericks

Click the KeyboardPreferences button at the bottom of the window to open the keyboard preferences

In the next window, click the Input Sources tab. Click Show Input menu in menu bar at the bottom of the window.

Then click the + key to open available keyboards by language.Click the + link at the bottom left to see list of available keyboards.

In the next window scroll to languages you are interested. Highlight any keyboard you want to activate with the mouse, then click the Add key. Repeat as needed for each keyboard.The Dvorak keyboard highlighted and a preview is shown. Click Add button to add keyboard

Location of Certain Keyboards

English has U.S. Extended, Dvorak and keyboards for different countries

Others has Unicode Hex Input

Older Versions

To activate different keyboards in OS X , do the following. NOTE: If you are using foreign language scripts in "Classic"
environment software, you may also need to install Language
Kits.

Go to the Apple menu and open Systems Preferences.

Click the International icon (or Text and International in OS X 10.6) on the first row of the Systems Preferences panel.System Preferences International Option (OS X 10.5)

System Preferences Language & Text Option (OS X 10.6)

Click the Input Menu tab or (or Input Sources (OS X 10.6)/Keyboard Menu (OS X 10.2) tab) and check the keyboards you want activated.
NOTE: If you do not see the keyboard you need to activate, you may need to install
them from an OS X CD or download the most recent version of OS X from Apple. Make sure the appropriate Localized Files are checked
during the installation set-up wizard.

Student Computing Labs - For the OS X machines in the Student Computing labs, a number of keyboards have
been activated already including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Arabic,
Hebrew, Greek, Icelandic (Old English), and several others.

Other keyboards can be activated by following the instructions above, but they
must be reactivated every time you log in.

View Keyboard Layouts

Keyboard Viewer in OS X

The Keyboard Viewer shows the locations of different characters on a keyboard, but not variations in fonts. Those are in the Font Book utlitity.

Go to the Apple menu and open Systems Preferences then International. Check Keyboard Viewer as one the options, then close this window.Note: In System 10.6 (Snow Leopard), the Keyboard Viewer is bundled with the Character Palette option.

Open a document in any application, then switch your keyboard by clicking on the American flag icon (). and using the drop down menu to switch to another keyboard.

Return to the keyboard menu and select Show Keyboard Viewer. A virtual keyboard will open.Tiger Keyboard Viewer set to Russian Phonetic

Press the Shift, Option or Shift+Option to see the keyboard layout under those conditions. Hot keys (e.g. accents) may appear in yellow in newer versions.

Font Book Utility (10.3 and later)

This utilitiy allows you to see variations in appearence between fonts. See the OS X Install and Manage Fonts page for more information on Font Book utility for more information.

For locations of different characters on alternate keyboards, use the Keyboard Viewer.

View Different Keyboard Layouts in KeyCaps (10.2 only)

Note: This utility was available in older versions of Macintosh, but was phased out as of Panther (10.3).

Click on the icon for main local hard disk. Navigate to the Applications folder, then Utilities, then
KeyCaps. Switch keyboards in the upper right flag menu to switch views of the keyboard.

Unicode Hex Input

You can use the utility in OS X to generate many Unicode characters by manually inputting the hexadecimal
code. Other options include saving word processor files as Unicode or UTF
text.

Make sure you have activated the Unicode Hex Input keyboard. See the activate keyboards section for more details.

Open an application which supports Unicode HexInput such as TextEdit. TextEdit is installed with OS X and can be opened from the Dock or the Applications folder.

Switch keyboards to the Unicode Hex Input from the flag icon dropdown menu on the upper right. If the Unicode Hex Option
is grayed out, then you are in an application which does not support
this utility.Note: Most current applications support this keyboard, but some old versions of software may not.

To input a specific character, hold down the option key, then type in the
four-digit hexadecimal Unicode value (e.g. 044D = Cyrillic э). Charts listing Unicode values for different scripts are available at www.unicode.org/charts.

To use these files, you should install them in the Library/Keyboard Layouts folder (all users) or the ~Library/Keyboard Layouts folder (one user only). Reboot and Activate from the System Preferences International panel.

Read the instructions for each keyboard layout for details on installation and use.

Notes on Where to Install

Installing a keyboard layout in just one user’s folder reduces the risk of damage to a system.

However some older versions of OS X only recognized layout installed in the main (all users) library.